from the a-stupid-law-begets-stupid-outcomes dept

If you'll recall, one of the NSA's (and TSA, DHS, etc.) foremost apologists, Stewart Baker, decided to highlight the ridiculousness of Europe's "right to be forgotten" ruling by sending in a few requests of his own. One of the links targeted by Baker's "for demonstration purposes only" requests was the tag "Stewart Baker" here at Techdirt.

This link is inappropriate. It compiles stories making many distorted claims about my political views. Political views are a particularly sensitive form of personal data. The stories are written by men who disagree with me, and they are assembled for the purpose of making money for a website, a purpose that cannot outweigh my interest in controlling the presentation of sensitive data about myself.

While Baker probably wouldn't have been too terribly bothered if Google "forgot" Techdirt's posts, the real point of his academic exercise was to probe for responses from the search giant. Baker didn't do anything to game the system, clearly stated he was an American citizen and provided a copy of his ID as required.

The end result? Nothing that Baker challenged was removed, but the responses show that Google is at least following up on "right to be forgotten" requests from extra-jurisdictional requesters, rather than simply telling them the law doesn't apply to them.

Would Google honor a takedown request made by a person who wasn’t a UK or EU national? The answer appears to be yes. Google’s response does not mention my nationality as a reason for denying my requests. This is consistent with Europe’s preening view that its legal “mission civilisatrice” is to confer privacy rights on all mankind. And it may be the single most important point turned up by this first set of hacks, because it means that lawyers all around the world can start cranking out takedown requests for Belorussian and Saudi clients who don’t like the way they look on line.

That's not a promising development. Google may not be enforcing anything but the letter of the law, but the examination of requests coming from outside the ruling's jurisdiction means Google is also somewhat acquiescing to the spirit of the ruling. But when it came to delisting information, Google drew the line for reasons unrelated to requester origin.

In an effort to see whether Google would let me get away with blatant censorship of my critics, I asked for deletion of a page from Techdirt that seems to be devoted to trashing me and my views…

To American ears, such a claim is preposterous, but under European law, it’s not. Google, thank goodness, still has an American perspective: “Our conclusion is that the inclusion of the news article(s) in Google’s search results is/are – with regard to all the circumstances of the case we are aware of – still relevant and in the public interest.” If I had to bet, I’d say that this rather vague statement is the one Google uses when other, more pointed reasons to deny relief don’t work. But the reference to this page as a “news article” suggests that Google may be using a tougher standard in evaluating takedown requests for news media, a term that applies, at least loosely, to Techdirt.

It appears that Google is still very hesitant to remove anything even "loosely" related to news media (a backhanded compliment from Baker!), which is good news. Not that Baker's quick "hack" approaches anything near empirical research, but at least in terms of boilerplate responses, Google seems to defer to the public interest.

There's no way to tell if that balance would shift more if the requester was actually European, and it would seem from early reports that newsworthy "right to be forgotten requests" are an exercise in futility even when they do result in delisting orders. Hitting news media with requests has only resulted in new news about requester's actions/words he or she wants buried and, possibly more importantly, new articles, seeing as Google appears to be more protective of recent news.

I’m having trouble finding stuff in my search history that is sufficiently inaccurate or outdated, especially now that we know Google is treating professional activities and news as per se relevant (at least if it’s “recent,” whatever that means).

The RTBF is still a horrible idea that can only be implemented badly, and it will either get worse as more people find ways to game the system, or simply fall into disrepair as more people (especially anyone considered by Google to be a "public figure") find it nearly impossible to bury past behavior. Like many other internet-targeted rulings, the idea behind it is (somewhat) noble, but the premise is utterly flawed and the actual deployment a complete farce. Google (and other search engines) are in an unenviable situation for the forseeable future, forced to comply with a law that simply can't be complied with.

from the gone-but-not-forgotten dept

The European Court of Justice's awful "right to be forgotten" ruling is continuing to memory hole perfectly factual stories -- but publications like the BBC are bringing them back to light. Google has informed the BBC of 12 more stories that it is removing from its index thanks to requests from individuals who'd prefer that their history no longer be accessible to the public. While Google does not reveal who is making the request, it's often not too difficult to figure it out -- even though Google is now warning the BBC that sometimes the requester's name may only be in the comments.

I'm still trying to figure out what good this effort accomplishes. Deleting factual things makes no sense. Allowing people to go back and erase perhaps embarrassing things from their past may have a visceral appeal, but it's just silly. People do embarrassing things that they later regret. It's a part of life. Part of maturing is being able to admit that you did silly things in the past and that you learned from them. Trying to disappear them down the memory hole seems to highlight how an immature person remained immature.

from the above-the-law dept

It would be easy to assume that the European Patent Office (EPO) stands in the same relationship to the European Union as the USPTO does to the United States, but that's actually wide of the mark. The EPO is a very strange beast indeed, as its Wikipedia entry makes clear:

The premises of the European Patent Office enjoy a form of extraterritoriality. In accordance with the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities, which forms an integral part of the European Patent Convention under Article 164(1) EPC, the premises of the European Patent Organisation, and therefore those of the European Patent Office, are inviolable. The authorities of the States in which the Organisation has its premises are not authorized to enter those premises, except with the consent of the President of the European Patent Office.

Far from being some boring government office like any other, the EPO is like a mini nation-state. This curious fact has been taken as the starting point for a witty post on the IPKat blog about a little-known country, Eponia:

a small landlocked state mainly based in Munich, though it has established colonies in The Hague, Berlin, Vienna and Brussels. Few people are born in Eponia (though it is rumoured that quite a few have been conceived there); most are settlers -- though they prefer to call themselves by a less provocative term, Examiners.

Here are some details about its financial operation:

One of the most buoyant economies in Europe, Eponia enjoys a unique and apparently inexhaustible source of income: patent tourism. Pilgrims come from far and wide to place their supplications before the local sages, or Boards of Appeal. Well-wishers also ply Eponia with money in order to obtain patents, cancel patents, amend patents or sometimes just to accelerate or retard the rate at which these much-desired services are delivered. Those whose petitions for a patent are successful often find that they are blessed with plenty, and that their influence extends from one end of Europe to the other. Some say that this good fortune can persist for getting on for 20 years, so long as occasional sacred donations, quaintly termed "renewal fees", are paid. What other country in Europe can offer such attractions? The horseshoe, the four-leaf clover, the leprechaun pale into insignificance in comparison.

And let's not forget about more elevated matters:

The national religion of Eponia is contained in a document known as the European Patent Convention, whose Articles (far more numerous than the Church of England's mere 39) are held to have been dictated directly into the ear of Blessed Bob van Benthem by a divine voice in the form of a holy hummingbird. While of less mystical origin, the Rules are also greatly revered. Like any sacred text, its superficial meaning is open to misinterpretation, and only specially trained priests are initiated into the deeper meaning of its rites and rituals (enigmatically referred to as "Guidelines"). When sufficiently inspired, those who are closest to achieving spiritual ecstasy can be seen and heard to be "talking in tongues", which embrace English, German and French -- but never Spanish or Italian.

A unitary patent will be a European patent granted by the EPO under the provisions of the European Patent Convention to which unitary effect for the territory of the 25 participating states is given after grant, at the patentee's request.

The UPC will operate in relation to an upgraded framework of patents that are granted by the European Patent Office (EPO), with such patents being able to have unitary effect in all participating states (i.e. those which have approved the relevant EU Regulation). By replacing the jurisdiction of the national courts in enforcement and invalidity proceedings of such patents, the UPC will take exclusive competence to determine all disputes relating to patents with unitary effect. The new system has all the main characteristics of a federal court, apart from the name. However, although a federal structure is adopted, important elements are strikingly different. First, the EU states do not form a federation under which benefits are pursued for the common good of one state and second, there is no legislative authority to influence the economic policy which underlies the determination of the legal principles and standards that define patents as objects of property in the UPC system.

That emphasizes once more that the unitary patent system has been decoupled from the normal legislative and democratic processes of the European Union, and thus will be under no obligation to take heed of the economic interests of the European citizens. Here's why that is likely to be a problem:

There is no precedent in the political history of modern democracies where important property issues affecting the economic sustainability and development of a country, and the proprietary rights and business prospects of its people, were conclusively and exclusively taken by a judicial body at supranational level. A democratic policy-making process for the determination of patents as objects of property exists, of course, in all countries of the world, including the US, whose system the UPC tries to imitate. The difference is that the US unified patent system does not escape democratic control, and the economic policies that it serves are widely debated by legislators, judges, economists, lawyers and industry players, all of whom are residents of the same country.

It's still early days for the unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court, so it's not yet clear how the new system will work, and how serious the problems will be. The danger is that Eponia might turn out to be not so much a quaint oddity in the European political landscape as a dangerous rogue state with serious negative consequences for the region's businesses and citizens.

from the but,-uh,-it's-editable dept

Late last week, Google responded to the concerns raised by some EU regulators regarding how it is implementing the new "right to be forgotten" rules. Google's full response is well worth reading going into a fair bit of detail, highlighting how there are a lot of non-trivial decisions to be made in this process -- brought on by a ridiculous European Court of Justice ruling. As part of it, Google notes that the process is entirely one-sided and they only get information from the person wishing to delete information from search engines:

We generally have to rely on the requester for information, without assurance beyond the
requester’s own assertions as to its accuracy. Some requests turn out to have been made
with false and inaccurate information. Even if requesters provide us with accurate
information, they understandably may avoid presenting facts that are not in their favour. As
such, we may not become aware of relevant context that would speak in favour of
preserving the accessibility of a search result. An example would be a request to remove
an old article about a person being convicted of a number of crimes in their teenage years,
which omits that the old article has its relevance renewed due to a recent article about that
person being convicted for similar crimes as an adult. Or a requester may not disclose a
role they play in public life, for which their previous reported activities or political positions
are highly relevant. We have also seen examples of data subjects who indiscriminately
submit many URLs that are displayed as search results for their name, even though some
URLs are actually about another person with the same name.

As if to highlight the difficulty, Google is apparently now set to disappear a Wikipedia page from its index due to a right to be forgotten request. But, of course, Wikipedia pages are open and constantly editable, so it seems weird to order that the page be removed entirely from the search engine when someone could just edit it instead. And, if the edit gets reverted, well, perhaps it's because it's factual information that is perfectly fine to include in Wikipedia and in Google.

The article does not reveal the particular Wikipedia page or any further information, but highlights just what a ridiculous ruling the original ECJ ruling was. Google is a search engine. Its entire purpose is to help people find what they're looking for -- not to judge whether or not it's appropriate for someone to be seeking that information in the first place. And then, once you include the editable nature of Wikipedia to the mix, you're creating a situation that is doubly ridiculous, since there are so many other options for how to deal with the issue.

from the now-they-can't-deny-it,-but-will-they-act-on-it? dept

In January of this year, we urged Techdirt readers to express their views on copyright by participating in the European Commission's consultation on the subject. It seems that many of you did, judging by the final numbers, which have just been published by the Commission (pdf):

The public consultation generated broad interest with more than 9,500 replies to the consultation document and a total of more than 11,000 messages, including questions and comments, sent to the Commission's dedicated email address. A number of initiatives were also launched by organized stakeholders that nurtured the debate around the public consultation and drew attention to it.

Some 5600 response came from the public, 2400 from authors/performers, and a thousand or so from companies. The European Commission has published an analysis of the comments on a question-by-question basis. This makes it slightly hard to get an overall sense of what the various sectors are saying, but fortunately Leonhard Dobusch has tackled that problem in an illuminating post on the Governance Across Borders blog:

I tried to have a look at the bigger picture here: what do we learn about the state of copyright at large? And what overall direction should copyright reform take?

Here's how he addressed those questions:

What I have done is to check for each of the 24 issue sections whether one of the respective stakeholder groups sees a need for copyright reform or is content with the current copyright system (for details check out a public Google spreadsheet with original quotes). The results are not entirely surprising and very clear: we have a strong divide among copyright stakeholders with end users and institutional users (e.g. libraries, archives, universities) strongly in favor of copyright reform and authors, collective management organizations, publishers and producers in favor of the current copyright system.

He then turned that information into two striking graphics:

For those that can't view those images, they show the public massively in favor of reforming just about every aspect of copyright, and publishers massively against doing so. As Dobusch writes:

the two charts above indicate that current EU copyright is very unbalanced. When one side is completely satisfied with the status quo and the other is very unhappy then this is not a balanced situation. Given that a good compromise should leave everybody equally unhappy, the results of the consultation also show the direction for copyright reform efforts of the new EU Commission: re-balancing copyright requires at least some reform as demanded by end users and institutional users, most importantly a more harmonized and flexible system of exceptions and limitations.

This is what Techdirt and many others have been urging for years. What's important here is that with this significant response to the consultation, it is now impossible for the European Commission to ignore the chasm between the views of the public, hugely unhappy about the current imbalance of copyright, and those of the publishers, desperately trying to keep things as unfair and as profitable as they are currently. Whether the Commission does anything about it is quite another matter.

from the the-only-way-it-was-ever-going-to-play-out dept

When the EU Court of Justice issued its "right to be forgotten" ruling, it seemed to forget that there are many more parties involved than simply the aggrieved person standing in front of them. There are those whose articles are being delisted, many of which are journalistic institutions that aren't going to simply lay there and allow some third party to selectively edit their publications.

In the attack, the thugs glassed paratrooper Adam Evans in the neck and stabbed him in the leg. Another of the soldiers, Jamie Morton, who was kicked and punched on the ground, said he feared he was going to die.

At the trial of the three men, Judge William Morris said: “These victims were all injured. Mr Evans was very gravely injured indeed.”

Someone thought this story should just go away. The Bolton News thought otherwise. Now, whoever wanted the original story delisted has another article to add to a future request. But judging from editor-in-chief's comments, adding Bolton News links to a right to be forgotten request is going to be a waste of time.

“As the editor of a newspaper, I believe passionately in the freedom of the press and I will fight any attempts to remove legitimate content…

“Clearly, people who aren’t happy that stories which we have legitimately published should not have the right to have them removed from a Google search, in my view."

It sounds like the Bolton News will simply highlight each request as it comes in, defeating the requester's attempt to bury bad news. Many other journalism outlets have taken the same stance in the last several days, turning the EU court's ruling into one of the most self-defeating decisions ever rendered.

The only way to prevent this is for the EU court to start taking action against journalistic entities who subvert the spirit of the ruling or ordering Google to stop notifying those affected, neither of which should even be considered by the legal body. The original ruling was terrible enough, especially in its blissful ignorance of how this "right to be forgotten" would work in practice.

Things can be forgotten, even on the internet. But it's organic. Whatever the steady flow of content doesn't push aside will likely succumb to link rot at some point. Newspaper websites (a favorite target of right to be forgotten requests) experiment with paywalled archives or otherwise make their older articles unavailable (often just sloppy maintenance or coding), solving many of these complainants' problems for them. Issuing a request is pretty much guaranteed to bring it all right back to the surface. Forcing this organic process will almost always backfire, something requesters should keep in mind before filling out Google's webform.

from the bing-is-already-forgotten dept

It's no secret that Google has a much larger market share than Microsoft's Bing search engine -- especially in Europe where Google has been much more successful than its competitors. However, Bing and other search engines are still subject to the terrible EU Court of Justice ruling on the right to be forgotten, which has resulted in Google removing a bunch of links. As we noted, Google was flooded with requests, and had to set up a process and staff to handle them all -- something it hasn't done a very good job with so far.

So, what's Microsoft doing? Well, it's taking it's time, but is promising to get a request form similar to Google's up. It doesn't sound like it's going to have to hire a very big staff to do so, because it appears that Microsoft's biggest concern in Europe may be more that it's been forgotten by Europeans. Almost no one is asking Bing to forget them:

When Google released its web form on May 30, for instance, it received about 12,000 requests within the first 24 hours. Microsoft is thought to have received fewer than 20 requests that day.

Ouch. That's almost insulting. Hell, even we received a request under that ruling (though a bogus one).

from the so-how's-this-work-now? dept

Last week, of course, there was a lot of attention around Google alerting publications that some of their stories had been removed from its index over "right to be forgotten" requests, following a dangerous European Court of Justice ruling. Various publications in the UK complained about some of the removals, and requested if there was any sort of appeals process. The BBC was initially told that there was no such process, though the Guardian claimed it was looking for ways to appeal.

It appears that the current "appeals" process is based on how much attention and ridiculousness happen in response to the revelations. Because late last week, Google restored some of the links for the Guardian (mainly the ones where the removals made no sense at all).

Either way, this has now created quite a mess, which was easily predictable as soon as the court's ruling came down. How anyone can think a somewhat arbitrary censorship mechanism would function smoothly is beyond me.

I would sing you "Happy Birthday". But technically I think the song is still under copyright — I don't want to have to pay the royalty.

Of course, whether or not Happy Birthday is truly under copyright is at the heart of a big legal fight, with significant evidence suggesting that the song is clearly in the public domain.

However, Kroes is making a larger point about the way we view copyright today, and how that does not fit with how the world works. As such, she suggests rethinking how a copyright system should work:

I start from principles. What should a sound EU copyright system do?

First, it needs to promote creativity and innovation. To encourage and stimulate innovative new works, new opportunities, new channels, new models. To enable the research that leads to new discoveries.

This is a great start, and it highlights a key point of copyright law: it is supposed to encourage those kinds of things. The problem is that very little research has actually been done to determine if it actually does that. Instead, it's often taken on the basis of faith that it must do that, without considering whether it really does, or if there are other limiting downsides to how it's currently done. Some people claim that I am somehow "against" copyright. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am happy to support a copyright system that has been shown to actually promote creativity and innovation. I've just seen very little evidence to suggest our current system really does that.

Unfortunately, Kroes' next point seems a bit off to me, though I understand why she's making it:

Second, it must remunerate and reward creators. That's not just about fairness. We expect creators to invest their time and talent. Of course reward, recognition, remuneration are essential: without them, the creative tap would fast stop flowing. I have always believed that.

But the current copyright system does not do it well. Not nearly well enough. Many creators scrimp by on a pittance, unable to find their full audience, unable to share or sell their works as widely or creatively as they want. Limitations and obstructions do nothing for creativity.

A few points on this. First, it seems to come from the incorrect assumption that copyright is a sort of "welfare" system for artists. That's not its purpose, nor how it was designed. Copyright itself has never "remunerated or rewarded creators." You can create all you want, and if no one likes it, all the copyrights in the world won't get you paid. It's the market that decides if you'll be rewarded for your creativity, and sometimes the market is cruel. It's possible that copyright can, in some cases, help create such a market, but to argue that copyright's job, alone, is to help get artists paid is misleading, as it leaves out the basic fact that that's never been the job of copyright. It may be an offshoot of the first point -- creating the incentives for creativity and innovation -- but to elevate the "help people get paid" point, dangerously positions copyright as more of a welfare system for artists, rather than as a tool for incentives in the market.

At the same time, the argument that "the creative tap would fast stop flowing" also does not seem supported by the data. At a time when artists keep complaining that it's harder and harder to get paid, we've seen an astounding explosion in new content being created. Part of the issue is, in fact, that the money being spent today is spread much more widely -- thus you have a lot of artists making that said "pittance," but it does not appear to have resulted in any decrease in creativity.

That said, I'm all for figuring out more ways for there to be more creativity, and if we can figure out ways to get more artists paid, that's a great idea. It's why I'm excited about new innovative services that helps drive that process forward. Platforms like Kickstarter, Patreon, YouTube, Bandcamp and more have created entirely new ways for artists to make money from their artwork. But, there's something important to note in all of that: almost none of those really are reliant on "copyright," and pretty much all of them would function in nearly the identical fashion without copyright.

Again, this is not to say that copyright is not important. It's to point out that it's faulty and dangerous to assume that copyright alone is the tool by which to get artists paid. It leads to poor policy choices that often ignore more interesting (and potentially lucrative) methods being developed in the market.

Third – it should enable a digital single market. Removing the barriers that get between artists and their audience, that prevent innovation, that shatter economies of scale. The EU's leaders are signed up to a full, vibrant digital single market. So is President-designate Juncker. Now they need to act on their ambitions – copyright is a major, essential part.

I'll leave this aside for the moment because it's a messy and complex issue in Europe that isn't quite as simple as some would like it to be. I agree that taking down barriers would help, but there is a lot of nuance at play in this particular issue.

And last: perhaps most importantly, the legal framework needs to take account of the needs of society. Users' interest and expectations matter alongside creators' rights. Rules cannot be impractical, uncertain, or unreasonable for ordinary users.

Indeed, this is the most important, but I think it also goes hand in hand with the first item on the list. If you take into account the needs of society, and make sure that copyright really does focus on incentives for creativity and innovation, then everything else in the system works out nicely.

But still, Kroes is absolutely right to note that today's copyright laws don't function well under these current principles, and because of that copyright itself is at risk of becoming irrelevant:

Every day citizens here in the Netherlands and across the EU break the law just to do something commonplace. And who can blame them when those laws are so ill-adapted.

Every day, startups, small businesses, scientists abandon innovative ideas because the legal fees are too great.

Every day, people bypass the copyright system using alternatives like open source: something which can lead to huge creativity, innovation, and richness.

Copyright risks becoming an irrelevance.

And Kroes further points out how it's not just that copyright is out of touch, but it may actively be harming the principles she states above:

The Internet gives enormous opportunities for artists and consumers. More direct access to a wider audience, and a wider range of content. New ways to share, spread, sell. New ways to reward and recognise. New ways for audiences to appreciate – getting what they want, when they want it. A good copyright system would help us achieve that. Today's does not.

Some examples.

When uncertainty prevents people remixing or creating their own content, how does that boost creativity?

When teachers are afraid to share teaching materials online, how does that help our society?

When a European Video-on-Demand provider tries to expand to new markets, but gives up because clearing copyright is so catastrophically cumbersome: how does that benefit our economy?

When consumers want to buy films or TV shows online but find they are geo-blocked: how does that benefit the fight against piracy? How does it benefit the artists whose works they could be watching?

When lovers of old films have to physically fly to a different country to see them, even if they're no longer in commercial circulation, how does that support European culture?

When museums have to take out insurance specifically against the risk of copyright lawsuits, because it's too complex and costly to figure out – how does that help promote European heritage?

When you can't sing happy birthday, or post a picture of the Atomium, how is that fair or reasonable, how is that something you can explain to ordinary citizens?

When European scientists have to abandon text or data mining because they can't afford the legal fees – how does that help innovation and scientific progress? And by the way that restriction is costing our economy tens of billions of euros.

I see no real winners in any of those cases. Creators lose out; innovators lose out; users lose out; our economy loses out. The system serves no-one. Solve those problems and I see only winners. We just have to jump over our own shadow.

As she then notes, it's basically impossible to explain copyright to the average "man on the street." Many now see copyright as "a tool for obstruction, limitation and control" rather than "openness, innovation and creativity." The speech is well worth reading, and has some very good points. I just fear that the focus on that second point -- of pretending that copyright is a tool for guaranteeing payments in a kind of welfare system, is part of what leads to the current problems of the system, and takes it away from those other key goals of benefiting the public. If the system is designed properly to benefit the public, it should automatically create incentives that help artists, whose work is in demand, get paid.

from the baby-steps dept

A few days ago, Techdirt wrote about the Authors Guild losing yet again in its attempt to stop university libraries and Google scanning books without permission. Over in Europe, a similar, if rather more limited decision has been handed down by the Advocate General of the European Union's Court of Justice (pdf). As is usual, this is only a preliminary ruling, but is generally followed by the court itself. The case concerns a dispute between the Technical University of Darmstadt and a German publishing house, Eugen Ulmer KG:

The publishing house is seeking to prevent (i) the university from digitising a book it holds in its library collection published by Eugen Ulmer and (ii) users of the library from being able, via electronic reading points provided therein, to print the book or save it on a USB stick and/or take those reproductions out of the library. The university has digitised the book in question and made it available on its electronic reading posts. It has refused the offer of the publishing house to purchase and use as electronic books ('E-books') the textbooks it publishes.

Here's the key part of the decision:

the Advocate General considers that the [EU copyright] directive does not prevent Member States from granting libraries the right to digitise the books from their collections, if their being made available to the public by dedicated terminals requires it. That may be the case where it is necessary to protect original works which, although still covered by copyright, are old, fragile or rare. That may also be the case where the work in question is consulted by a large number of students and its photocopying might result in disproportionate wear.

However, [the Advocate General] Mr Jääskinen makes clear that the directive permits not the digitisation of a collection in its entirety, but only the digitisation of individual works. It is particularly important not to opt to use dedicated terminals where the sole purpose of doing so is to avoid the purchase of a sufficient number of physical copies of the work.

Lastly, Mr Jääskinen takes the view that the directive does not allow the users of dedicated terminals to save the works made available to them on a USB stick.

As that indicates, this is a fairly specific result, rather than a broad general right as in the US digitization case. However, what is encouraging is that it is the latest in a string of gooddecisions handed down by the European Union's Court of Justice that are starting to introduce a modicum of common sense to Europe's outdated copyright laws.